The guide, prepared by the Urban Institute and the law and consulting firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, is aimed at helping justice-involved individuals enroll efficiently in Medicaid and other health coverage to obtain “coordinated physical and behavioral health care.”

Currently, the “revolving door” between incarceration and the community leaves many people alternating between correctional and community-based providers, the guide said.

Better-coordinated health coverage will “enhance public safety, reduce recidivism, and more efficiently use public resources,” wrote the authors of the guide.

If states can improve health care for released inmates, they “will be in a stronger position to address (the) substance abuse issues, chronic physical and mental illness, unemployment and employment instability, and homelessness that result in many justice-involved people cycling in and out of jail or the hospital,” the authors wrote.

Maintaining health coverage is a common problem for released prisoners.

Prison inmates have four times the rate of active tuberculosis found in the general population, nine to ten times the rate of Hepatitis C, eight to nine times the rate of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, three times times the rate of serious mental illness, and four times the rate of substance abuse disorders, the guide said.

Jail populations have similar high levels. Many inmates fail to get needed care, and when they are released, they often face disruptions in medical care that contribute to recidivism, drug use, and poor and costly health outcomes. One study found a 12-fold increase in the risk of death in the two weeks after release.

Another study of people returning from prison in Ohio and Texas found that, within 10 months of release, a fifth had been hospitalized, and a third had sought care in emergency rooms.

The project, supported by the U.S. Justice Department, is called the “Connecting Criminal Justice to Health Care Initiative” (CCJH), and was developed by corrections and health care officials in Maryland and Los Angeles County, Ca.

The Arizona publication describes six strategies that the state has used to connect former prisoners with Medicaid coverage and health care services. The strategies include automating data-sharing arrangements between justice agencies and the state Medicaid program, automatically re-enrolling people who are about to be released into their previous Medicaid plan, and co-locating enrollment assistance and behavioral health services at probation and parole offices.

The report called the strategies “an innovative model that could be replicated in other jurisdictions.”

Ted Gest is president of Criminal Justice Journalists and Washington bureau chief of The Crime Report. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/16/better-health-care-can-help-ex-inmates-avoid-revolving-door-of-justice-study/feed/0‘Don’t Elect Me:’ Why States Should Abolish County Sheriffs’ Officeshttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/16/dont-elect-me-why-states-should-abolish-county-sheriffs-offices/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/16/dont-elect-me-why-states-should-abolish-county-sheriffs-offices/#respondFri, 16 Mar 2018 14:25:26 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=257885The office of sheriff is “anachronistic,” unaccountable to the public, and should be replaced with a more professional county police department, says a new study.

“There still must be a county law enforcement agency to serve unincorporated municipalities where they exist,” argues the study, published in the March 2018 edition of the Virginia Law Review.

“However, the twentieth century was a story of policing becoming more professionalized, and counties have increasingly found that a professional, dedicated county police department is a better organization to handle law enforcement than a jack-of-all-trades sheriff.”

The study, written by James Tomberlin of the University of Virginia School of Law, said local sheriff’s elections provide minimal accountability since so many incumbents run unopposed.

Quoting former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca’s response to a question from a citizens’ commission about how he could be held accountable for misconduct— “Don’t elect me”—the author noted that since at least 1932, no incumbent has ever been unseated in Los Angeles County, which hosts the largest sheriff’s department in the United States.

The office of sheriff dates back to the 9th century in England. Even as the power of the office declined after the 13th century, it was given new life in colonial America—and eventually became part of the myth of the West, where upright sheriffs helped tame a lawless frontier.

Today, there are a little over 3,000 sheriffs around the U.S., and their departments employ 352,000 personnel.

While elections nominally make sheriffs accountable to the public for their actions, in practice, voter turnout in local sheriffs’ elections is low, the study said, noting that in rural counties, most qualified replacements for the sheriff would be one of the sheriff’s immediate subordinates, making him or her less likely to want to run against their boss.

Adding to the challenge of public accountability, policing often involves “one-off” discretionary decision-making, which is harder to observe and review than public policy decisions made by politicians.

Municipalities or county governments are currently helpless to affect the conduct of their sheriff’s offices, wrote the author.

Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Caricature by DonkeyHotel via flickr

The study cited the conflict in 2008 between the small Arizona town of Guadalupe and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio who became notorious for his sweeps of local residents suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

Arpaio responded to the mayor’s complaints by saying, “If you don’t like the way we operate, you get your own police department.” But when the mayor said she would consider doing that, Arpaio “raised the stakes two weeks later, stating that he intended to cancel the town’s contract. “

The author contrasted that with Connecticut’s decision to abolish the officer of sheriff following a political battle. He quoted a comment by then-State Rep. Michael P.Lawlor, who said it’s “not a good idea to run a professional agency on a political basis. “

The study advocates merging county and city policing agencies into one department.

Independent researchers Bridget DuPey, Margaret B. Kwoka and Christopher McMichael from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law tried to collect internal affair files during 2015 and 2016 from law enforcement agencies across Colorado—but to little avail.

More than half of the 43 agencies they reached out to either did not respond or rejected their request.

Twenty-four of the agencies provided no responsive records. Only five of the law enforcement agencies queried supplied files that were deemed to be “substantially transparent.”

The intent of Colorado’s open-record laws is to promote the public’s interest in holding government accountable by requiring transparency, the study said.

One court noted that “transparency enhances public confidence in the police department and is constituent with community policing concepts and represents the more modern and enlightened view of the relationship between police departments and the communities they serve.”

But the study found this is hardly the case, and custodians generally deny all requests for files, regardless of the situation or outcomes.

The authors followed up with a second wave of requests to agencies that responded the first time, asking for more specific internal affairs documents.

Forty percent of agencies did not respond at all. Seven percent offered a duplicate of their first response, and thirteen percent asked for a prohibitive access fee.

Moreover, even when the alleged misconduct had been widely publicized, public outrage over the incident was high, and law enforcement agreed to a substantial payout of the alleged victim, public access of the files were still denied.

For example, in July 2017, the City of Aurora paid Darsean Kelley $110,000 to settle claims against an Aurora police officer who tased him in the back. A video of the incident had been viewed thousands of times, and Mr. Kelley’s case had generated nationwide media coverage, the study showed.

Still the authors’ open records request to the City of Aurora was denied.

However, law enforcement agencies have admitted that when compelled by the courts to release internal affairs files, no harm has been done to the integrity of any investigations.

To fulfill the promise of Colorado’s open record laws, the state legislature should pass laws requiring police agencies to disclose completed internal affairs files in response to requests, said researchers.

“Without such legislation, the public will remain in the dark even with it comes to police misconduct.”

This summary was prepared by TCR news intern John Ramsey. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/15/police-misconduct-records-denied-public-remains-in-dark-study/feed/0Congress Turns to School Safety After National School Walkouthttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/14/congress-turns-to-school-safety-after-national-school-walkout/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/14/congress-turns-to-school-safety-after-national-school-walkout/#commentsWed, 14 Mar 2018 15:16:59 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=256918As students from more than 2,800 schools staged a National School Walkout Wednesday, urging lawmakers to do more about gun violence, the House prepared to take up a bill that would fund training for students, school personnel and law enforcement to detect early signs of violence.

It would also fund threat assessments and “anonymous reporting systems” such as phone apps, hotlines and websites for threats of school violence.

Thousands of students, emboldened by a growing protest movement over gun violence, stood up in their classrooms and walked out of their schools after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., The New York Times reports.

The 17-minute protests unfolding at hundreds of schools are intended to pressure Congress to approve gun control legislation and come 10 days before major protests in Washington and elsewhere.

“We want to make sure that we’re focusing on the issue of guns and gun reform,” said Madison Thomas, 20, a Georgetown University student helping manage the walkout.

Some of the day’s most poignant demonstrations are happening at schools whose names are now synonymous with shootings.

In Colorado, students at Columbine High School will leave their classrooms and begin 30 seconds of silence: 17 for the dead in Parkland and 13 for the dead on their own campus in the shooting that seemed to signify the beginning of a generation of school attacks.

In Newtown, Conn., where 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, hundreds of students filed out of Newtown High School just moments before 10 a.m. and gathered in a parking lot near the football field. Some held posters. Organizers said they planned to recite the names of victims of gun violence.

Gun-control advocates hope for more from Congress than additional school security. They are calling for an expansion of background checks, a ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines, and other measures.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he is “anxious” to pass significant school safety legislation and the “Fix NICS” bill to improve reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. It’s unclear whether senators will act before they start a two-week recess on March 26.

Gun-control advocates hope for more from Congress than additional school security. They are calling for an expansion of background checks, a ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines, and other measures.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will analyze the government’s response to the Valentine’s Day shooting in Parkland, Fl., and discuss legislative proposals to improve school safety. Witnesses will include members of law enforcement agencies, a Parkland teacher and the father of a shooting victim.

The nationwide protests come at a time when young people in the U.S. are at disturbing risk of getting shot by other children, by their parents, by themselves, or by strangers, reports The Trace.

Government data and academic research on gun violence shows that no space is safe: children are struck by bullets at home, at the park, at school.

This year, at least 50 people have been shot or killed on a school or college campus, and the U.S. averaged one school shooting every week.

Drill down into the statistics on gun violence, and the damage becomes even more stark: Nineteen children a day are killed or hurt by guns that were too easy to access; more than 150,000 students study in schools where shots have rung out since Columbine; hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on medical treatment to save young lives.

The toll is a product of the nation’s prevalence of firearms (roughly 265 million guns in circulation), pro-gun policies and gun-industry marketing that can lead to unsafe behaviors among adults who possess firearms while raising children.

On average, 1,300 children die and nearly 5,800 are treated for gunshot wounds each year, according to a 2017 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vast majority of gun-violence victims are boys, who comprise 82 percent of those killed by bullets. Homicide rates are disproportionately high among African Americans; suicide rates are disproportionately high among whites and American Indians.

This summary was prepared from combined news reports by TCR staffer Megan Hadley.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/14/congress-turns-to-school-safety-after-national-school-walkout/feed/1Too Poor to Raise Bail, 100,000 New Yorkers Sent Behind Barshttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/14/too-poor-to-raise-bail-100000-new-yorkers-sent-beind-bars/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/14/too-poor-to-raise-bail-100000-new-yorkers-sent-beind-bars/#respondWed, 14 Mar 2018 13:00:03 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=256587A report by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) found that in eight of New York’s 62 counties, some 100,000 people spent time in jail between 2010 and 2014 because they couldn’t afford cash bail; and of these pretrial detainees, over 60 percent were charged with misdemeanors or violations.

Until now, “the scope of the state bail problem outside of New York City has not been well understood,” said the report, released Tuesday.

The report was released ahead of Wednesday’s “day of action” in the state capital, where several organizations are gathering “to advocate for comprehensive criminal justice reforms, including fixes to New York’s bail, speedy trial and evidence-sharing practices,” writes the NYCLU.

Using records obtained through public record requests, the NYCLU analyzed bail data from eight small, medium and large counties in the state.

More than 5,800 New Yorkers were held on bail for violations only, most commonly for harassment, disorderly conduct, or trespassing. 41 percent of detainees charged with one of these violations were held on bail that exceeded the maximum fine they could be required to pay if found guilty.

According to the report, white defendants were more than two times more likely to be released on the same day bail was set than black defendants.

“While black and white New Yorkers each accounted for 45 percent of pretrial detainees who spent any time in custody after bail was set in their case, 48 percent of those who spent at least one night in custody were black compared to 41 percent white, and 50 percent of those who spent at least one week in custody were black compared to 38 percent white,” the study said.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/14/too-poor-to-raise-bail-100000-new-yorkers-sent-beind-bars/feed/0An ‘Independent’ FBI Would Threaten US Civil Liberties: Paperhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/12/an-independent-fbi-would-threaten-us-civil-liberties-paper/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/12/an-independent-fbi-would-threaten-us-civil-liberties-paper/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 14:18:53 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=256022The best way to ensure the independence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from the president while maintaining civilian control is to split the agency into separate organizations for criminal investigation and national security, argues a paper published in the George Washington Law Review.

Calls for the “independence” of the FBI, particularly in the wake of controversy connected with President Donald Trump’s efforts to halt the investigation into his campaign’s connection with Russia, are “misguided and dangerous,” wrote Justin Walker of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.

Although Walker writes he is not advocating splitting the agency, he says that those worried about presidential interference in the FBI’s criminal investigation should consider such a move instead of trying to make the “entire agency independent,” which he warns would violate the principle of civilian control of the military.

Giving such blanket independence to the FBI would threaten civil liberties and undermine the warnings expressed by the Founding Fathers about a military outside of civilian control.

“Just as distinct political, religious, and ethnic groups were often targeted by the armies whose abuses in Britain and the colonies caused the founders’ skepticism of standing armies, so too for individuals and groups targeted by the FBI,” wrote Walker.

The article details the history of civil liberty infringements associated with the FBI’s national security efforts, through the early 20th century to the post 9/11 world, listing abuses such as “illegal and warrantless wiretaps, buggings, burglaries, destruction of files, and harassment of political minorities, the gay community, and African-Americans.”

While the author also extols the FBI’s achievements, he notes that keeping the agency accountable to the president and congress is essential.

“The FBI director should not think of himself as the Nation’s Protector,” Walker wrote. “Instead he must think of himself as an agent of the president. Of course like any military officer, he should give candid advice and like any military officer, he should not obey illegal orders.

“But he must not make the mistake of (former) Director J. Edgar Hoover and view himself as an independent force who can decide for himself what practices to pursue, what politics to embrace, and what commands from the president or attorney general to obey.”

Walker warned, “When the FBI is independent of the president, it is independent of us—and of anyone.”

The article says splitting the agency into two separate units –one for criminal investigations and one for security—“would be consistent with the principle of civilian control of the military,” and follow a model used by other countries such as the United Kingdom, where MI 5 is in charge of counterterrorism, counterintelligence and domestic intelligence; and New Scotland Yard is responsible for criminal investigation.

Walker said the 9/11 Commission came close to recommending such a reform.

But the effort failed after “extensive lobbying” by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who currently heads the probe into the Trump campaign.

TCR news intern John Ramsey contribute to this summary. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/12/an-independent-fbi-would-threaten-us-civil-liberties-paper/feed/0Could Sentencing ‘Discounts’ Replace Plea Bargaining?https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/09/could-sentencing-discounts-replace-plea-bargaining/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/09/could-sentencing-discounts-replace-plea-bargaining/#respondFri, 09 Mar 2018 15:55:04 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=254056A fairer trial system requires both transparency and a shift of power away from prosecutors “into the hands of (impartial) sentencing judges,” argue the authors of a forthcoming article in Missouri Law Review.

It isn’t an exaggeration to say the right to a fair trial in the U.S. is close to a myth, when the fate of more than 90 percent of criminal cases is determined by unrecorded conversations that take place in a courthouse hallway, according to the article, entitled Plea Bargaining: From Patent Unfairness to Transparent Justice.

The authors propose replacing the current U.S. system with a model similar to one used in Australia, where judges have a high degree of authority over sentencing, and where the high court has ruled that prosecutors cannot even make a submission regarding an appropriate sentence.

The plea bargaining in U.S. courtrooms between prosecutors and defense attorneys, which Justice Anthony Kennedy called “horse trading,” isn’t really a “negotiation” at all due to the imbalance of power on the side of prosecutors, according to the authors– making a defendant’s decision to plead guilty a rational choice.

“The realities of the prison and the bail system, and the nearly unfettered power reposed in prosecutors often applies considerable persuasive force to those defendants who do not have the resources to get out of jail on bail or take their cases to trial,” the article says.

In US courts, the judge is absent from the plea negotiations. Unlike trials, there are no records of the bargaining process, which happens outside the courtroom—in brief conversations between court appearances, sometimes by email, and sometimes over the phone.

Though judges can later reject a defendant’s guilty plea, “in reality, nearly all plea agreements are accepted by the courts,” write the authors– because the courts know very little about the case, and are under “considerable time pressures.”

The paper was written by Mirko Bagaric, Director of the Evidence-Based Sentencing and Criminal Justice Project, Swinburne University Law School; Julie N. Clark, of Melbourne Law School; and William Rininger, of the University of Akron School of Law.

They propose establishing a sentencing discount of up to 30 percent to all offenders who plead guilty. Where the prosecution’s case is weak, and a defendant is “tenably innocent,” they should receive a discount of up 75 percent. This will reduce both incarceration levels and discrimination in sentencing, they argue.

The paper acknowledges the constitutional limitations of this scheme; namely, the potential interference with a defendant’s right not to plead guilty, and right to a fair trial.

“Paradoxically, the effect of our proposal is that defendants with the strongest defense will be most strongly encouraged to plead guilty,” the authors write. But it’s clear that the current plea process results in many innocent people pleading guilty, they argue, and “while our proposal will have the same effect, it has a demonstrable advantage over the current system.”

They add: “The transparency of the reform means that defendants will know precisely the maximum discount that is available to them if they relinquish their right to trial. This means that they can make fully-informed, autonomous decisions regarding their criminal justice outcomes and have a basis for confidence that their prospect of acquittal, if they had elected to exercise their right to trial, will be reflected in a significantly lower sentence.

“This is in contrast to the current situation, where the discount accorded to defendants in the plea bargaining process is, to some extent, driven by the opaqueness and fickleness of the respective negotiation skills of the prosecutor and defense lawyers.”

According to the paper forthcoming in Economic Inquiry, many police jurisdictions grant officers immunity from penalties for these errors under the belief that harsh discipline would cause them to become “timid” during encounters with suspects, and potentially weaken law enforcement efforts. However, economists have long argued that wrongful arrests also lower the “opportunity cost” of committing a crime.

In order to understand the trade-off between punishing police for wrongful arrests on the one hand, and incentivizing the kind of “proactive enforcement efforts” that sometimes lead to errors on the other, economists Ajit Mishra, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Bath (UK), and Andrew Samuel, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Loyola University, studied three different types of “penalty regimes” in the U.S.

The first category consists of those jurisdictions that grant full immunity from penalties; the second, harsh penalties for wrongful arrests and detentions; and the third, “qualified immunity,” where officers are punished only if they acted incompetently (rather than committing an “honest mistake”).

Honest Mistake, or Incompetence?

For the sake of this study, authors assumed that wrongful arrests that are not “honest mistakes” are therefore caused by incompetence, as opposed to indifference, lack of will, or malice.

The study found a negative “competence effect” on jurisdictions that do not enforce penalties for wrongful arrests, concluding that “full immunity gives officers weak incentives to invest in costly measures that make them more capable of distinguishing criminals from innocents.”

Instead of decreasing crime, write the authors, immunity may increase illegal activity by providing no reason for police officers to increase their competence.

While admitting there was no “econometric” evidence for the effects of granting immunity, they cited David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun crime reporter, as providing anecdotal support for the notion that, while not punishing officers for false arrest might deter some crime, full immunity lowers police competence to identify criminals over time.

In on online article titled “The Audacity of Despair,” Simon described a campaign by Baltimore police to restore order by placing many innocent individuals in jail. In order to protect themselves from lawsuits, Simon wrote, “the [police] actually had police supervisors stationed with printed forms at the city jail that said…you can go home now if you sign away any liability the city has for wrongful arrest, or
you can not sign the form and spend the weekend in jail until you see a court commissioner…thousands of people signed that form.”

The study also found a relationship between immunity and decreasing police competence when faced with more complex cases. This finding is particularly critical when considering the broad immunity granted to officials conducting anti-terrorism investigations.

Qualified immunity, however, appears to mitigate both the “timidity” and “competence” effects on law enforcement.

The authors wrote: “When the judicial authorities can observe the officer’s competence decision, then qualified immunity does raise compliance, reduce harassment and wrongful arrests, and improve the competence of officers”– but only if these authorities have complete information regarding an officer’s competency choice.

“We believe that this result is especially important in light of U.S. Court rulings that
have concluded that as long as the officers are acting “competently” they are “immune from being sued for apprehending an innocent individual,” the paper said.

Ajit Mishra is a senior lecturer in Economics at the University of Bath. Andrew Samuel is an associate professor of Economics at Loyola University, Maryland. The full report, “Law enforcement and wrongful arrests with endogenously (in)competent officers,” is forthcoming in the April issue of Economic Inquiry. Readers can request an online early publication version from the authors here. This summary was prepared by TCR Deputy Editor Victoria Mckenzie.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/06/does-police-immunity-for-wrongful-arrests-really-deter-crime/feed/1Kansas Juvenile Justice Reforms Cut Detentions by 34 percenthttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/05/kansas-juvenile-justice-reforms-cut-detentions-by-34-percent/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/05/kansas-juvenile-justice-reforms-cut-detentions-by-34-percent/#respondMon, 05 Mar 2018 16:16:08 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=253114Reforms to Kansas’ juvenile justice system have already sharply reduced detentions for young people, and are projected to allow the state to shift over $72 million in savings to alternative approaches for dealing with troubled youth, according to a recent report.

Between July 2016 and June 2017, the total juvenile “out of home population”—which includes youth sent to detention facilities, group homes and state correctional facilities—dropped by 34 per cent, a report from the Kansas Juvenile Justice Oversight Committee said.

The report, summed up by the Pew Charitable Trusts Public Safety Performance Project (PSPP), said the reductions allowed the Kansas Department of Corrections to close one of its two juvenile correctional facilities and shift more than $12 million to “evidence-based supervision and services for youths living at home.”

The reductions were the first results of juvenile justice reforms adopted by the state in 2016.

“Research shows that residential commitments do not typically improve outcomes and can increase the likelihood of reoffending, particularly for youths who have committed low-level offenses,” wrote Jake Horowitz, director of research and policy for the PSPP.

“Despite these findings, a majority of youths were placed out of home before the reforms for such offenses at a cost of up to $89,000 per youth each year.”

According to the state’s predictions, the reforms will slash out-of-home youth placements by 60 percent by 2022, saving over $72 million. The Kansas juvenile legislation requires that the savings be reinvested in effective alternatives to incarceration.

Horowitz said Kansas has joined the list of other states who have developed strategies to reduce the number of young people held in correctional institutions. They include: Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia.

All these states have reoriented their programs to invest in recidivism reduction, while reserving the use of detention for young people who are chronic offenders or commit the most violent offenses.

“Kansas’ experience shows that by aligning policies and resources with research, states can reduce incarceration and get a much higher return on their juvenile justice investments to better serve youths, their families and communities,” Horowitz wrote.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/05/kansas-juvenile-justice-reforms-cut-detentions-by-34-percent/feed/0As School Threats Rise, Focus Grows on School Resource Officershttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/05/as-school-threats-rise-focus-grows-on-school-resource-officers/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/05/as-school-threats-rise-focus-grows-on-school-resource-officers/#respondMon, 05 Mar 2018 16:14:56 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=253144Will more school resource officers help deter tragedies like the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Fl.?

This often-overlooked role in law enforcement is under the national glare like never before, the New York Times reports. Calls for additional school resource officers, a position that is a hybrid of counselor, educator and cop, have increased since the Parkland shooting, and perhaps no other job better personifies shifting ideas about schools, policing and safety.

The pressure has increased with reports since the shooting of nearly 800 threats against schools. The Educator’s School Safety Network, which tracks reports of school threats and violent incidents, counted 797 as of Sunday. Most (743) were for threats of various kinds, including gun and bomb threats. The threats were made mostly via social media (331) and verbally (119), the Associated Press reports.

That amounts to about a sevenfold increase in the usual rate, said the network’s Amy Klinger.

The number of school resource officers exploded in the community-oriented policing wave of the 1990s. As of 2013, about 30 percent of schools had a resource officers. But as budgets tightened, their ranks thinned.

Now there are calls for installing more of them in schools, with new positions announced in many districts last week.

“They have to be a mentor — a kind, caring, trusting adult, the nice police officer who will give you a high-five and ask you how your day is going,” said John McDonald, school security chief for Jefferson County, Co., which includes Columbine. “And very quickly they have to become a tactical cop. That switch is not for everybody. The ability to do that is very difficult.”

Fifteen students in a Florida school district are facing felony charges and prison time for making threats since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.

“Kids make bad decisions and I think that in decades past those decisions would have been addressed behind closed doors with the principal and parents,” said Ken Trump of National School Safety and Security Services. “Now they’re being addressed behind closed doors in the police station and the courtroom.”

The Volusia County Schools system in east-central Florida isn’t taking chances.

Sheriff Michael Chitwood made it clear he had a zero-tolerance policy as threats began after Parkland. He said students or their families would have to pay the costs of the investigations, at least $1,000 and sometimes much more.

This summary was compiled by TCR staffer Megan Hadley. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/05/as-school-threats-rise-focus-grows-on-school-resource-officers/feed/0Kerner Report 50 Years Later: Political Support for Justice Reform Still a Challengehttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/02/criminal-justice-50-years-after-the-kerner-report/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/02/criminal-justice-50-years-after-the-kerner-report/#respondFri, 02 Mar 2018 16:25:11 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=251489Fifty years ago this week, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission, headed by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner) issued its report. The panel was named by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots. The panel concluded that the U.S. was headed toward “two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal.”

This week, The Milton Eisenhower Foundation published “Healing Our Divided Society,” a look at how the U.S. has changed in the half-century since the report. The volume has three chapters on criminal justice. Delbert Elliott of the University of Colorado-Boulder asks if the nation has enough evidence-based programs and practices to mount a comprehensive violence- and crime-prevention initiative.

He says the current set of programs that meet a high enough scientific standard to take to scale is small and their impact would be modest.

“The political will to abandon ineffective and harmful programs and embed evidence-based programs, practices, and policies in our educational, health, and justice systems must be found,” Elliott says. “This was the critical obstacle identified in the original Kerner Commission report. It remains the critical obstacle.”

Former Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson, now at George Mason University, cited several reasons for optimism about policing. Few law enforcement leaders believe they can arrest their way out of the opioid crisis.

“Instead, there is a commitment to working in tandem with public health professionals to address these problems, using treatment and data tools,” she says. Because criminal justice is largely a state and local enterprise, reform will continue with or without leadership from the bully pulpit in Washington, she says.

Elliott Currie of the University of California Irvine says the Kerner report’s “basic message remains strikingly on target. Serious violent crime continues to be a fundamental, inescapable fact of life in most racial ghettoes in America.”

He notes the “racialized character of violent death.”

A recent survey in Chicago found that “a stunning 86 percent of blacks, versus 50 percent of whites, said that it was ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that a young person in their neighborhood would be a victim of violent crime.” He concludes that “the ‘startling’ differences in personal security the [Kerner] commission highlighted are still very much with us.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/02/criminal-justice-50-years-after-the-kerner-report/feed/0Justice Reformers Launch Scorecard on Progress in a ‘Watershed’ Yearhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/01/justice-reformers-launch-scorecard-on-progress-in-the-watershed-year/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/01/justice-reformers-launch-scorecard-on-progress-in-the-watershed-year/#respondThu, 01 Mar 2018 16:17:46 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=251313A national criminal justice advocacy and research group has launched a project that tracks major trends and developments in criminal justice throughout the country, focusing on 12 key areas of the justice system.

The State of Justice Report, released by the Vera Institute of Justice, also peers at the system through a number of different “lenses,” spotlighting bipartisan coalitions, racial justice, disability rights, and public health issues.

Vera, calling 2017 a “watershed year for criminal justice,” points to New Jersey’s lead on bail reform under a Republican governor, as well as other states that passed legislation limiting money bail and/or pretrial detention, such as Kentucky, Connecticut, New Mexico, and California. Locally, New Orleans passed a bail reform ordinance; and both Philadelphia and San Francisco issues reports on the impact of cash bail, signalling that leaders are taking a serious look at revising the system.

According to Vera, last year brought a growing recognition of the connection between domestic abuse and gun violence. While there has long been a preponderance of data linking intimate partner homicides and guns, “gaps in laws, policies, and practices in many jurisdictions continue to allow people subject to domestic violence protection orders or who have been charged with domestic violence crimes to possess firearms,” the authors write.

Last year, a bipartisan coalition of federal lawmakers introduced legislation to strengthen background checks on gun owners. And “eight states (Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington) adopted laws restricting gun ownership for people convicted of domestic violence or subject to a restraining order, bringing the total number of states with such laws to 27.”

Other bipartisan efforts that made progress last year were improvements to how sexual assault evidence is processed (SAFER Act of 2017), as well as state-level reforms in Louisiana and Massachusetts. Finally, says Vera, Democrats and Republicans around the country are pushing back against the Trump administration’s “tough on crime” agenda.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/03/01/justice-reformers-launch-scorecard-on-progress-in-the-watershed-year/feed/0Gun Politics ‘Distort’ Efforts to Protect Domestic Violence Victims: Studyhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/28/gun-politics-distort-efforts-to-protect-domestic-violence-victims-study/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/28/gun-politics-distort-efforts-to-protect-domestic-violence-victims-study/#respondWed, 28 Feb 2018 14:19:25 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=250206“Punitive” approaches to gun control can be counterproductive when they are applied to protecting women from domestic violence, according to a forthcoming research paper.

Gun control advocates who push for “one-size-fits-all” enforcement of laws that make it illegal for anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence offenses to possess firearms “ignore the reality of intimate-partner abuse,” argued the paper in the Ohio State Law Journal, posted online this month.

Such laws fail to address equally valid concerns of potential victims, such as whether an arrest that takes the family breadwinner out of the home would create economic hardship, the paper said.

“A real danger exists… that the politics of gun control will overwhelm and distort the search for a sound approach to intimate-partner violence,” wrote the paper’s author, Carolyn B. Ramsey of the University of Colorado Law School.

“Stripping all domestic violence offenders of their guns for conduct that includes merely reckless infliction of injury might have a variety of negative outcomes,” Ramsey continued.

“It might chill the reporting of abuse; exacerbate recidivism; lead to unemployment, a known contributor to intimate femicide for abusers whose jobs require them to carry a gun; and leave victims without weapons for self-defense.”

The paper, entitled, “Firearms in the Family,” argued that blanket gun bans for anyone convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense fail to take into account the wide variety of concerns and needs of individual spouses who may be victims, including individuals in minority communities.

But at the same time, Ramsey also took gun-rights advocates to task for depicting greater access to guns as a way of empowering women against threats inside and outside the home.

“(But) singing the praises of concealed-carry does little to protect women from violent attacks by their intimates at home.”

Gun-control and pro-gun advocates, she wrote, are equally at fault for manipulating stereotypes that serve ideological or political goals, and do not address the concerns of women exposed to the threat of domestic violence.

While Ramsey acknowledged that statistics show that about two-thirds of intimate-partner homicide victims are killed with a gun—usually a handgun—and that more than two-thirds of men and women murdered by spouses or ex-spouses between 1980 and 2008 were killed with guns, she cited surveys suggesting that women are skeptical of laws that prohibit all offenders convicted of misdemeanor abuse offenses from possessing firearms.

Ramsey argued instead for a “narrowly tailored” approach to gun prohibition that targets the most dangerous offenders, responds to the individual victim’s concerns, and allows for a way to “differentiate recidivists from offenders who learn to avoid using violence against intimates and family members.”

Noting that enforcement of existing domestic violence gun laws at state and federal levels is often erratic and undependable, she warned that taking a uniformly punitive approach could result in dis-incentivizing the reporting of abuse and increasing the likelihood of further or worse victimization by abusers angered by the removal of their guns.

“Gun-control in the context of domestic abuse ought to respond to a variety of concerns, not solely the aim of reducing homicide rates,” Ramsey wrote.

That was one of the verdicts of a panel of prominent media observers invited by Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ), a partner of The Crime Report, to review US justice coverage during 2017. The panel was moderated by Ted Gest, president of CJJ and TCR’s Washington bureau chief.

William Freivogel

The conflation of opinion and reporting “makes it hard for a democracy to make wise decisions when there isn’t agreement on the facts,” said William Freivogel, a professor of journalism at Southern Illinois University and publisher of the Gateway Journalism Review.

Freivogel said cable news shows were among the biggest culprits, exemplifying a “tribalism, with hosts presenting…only information that seems to conform with their preconceived beliefs.”

Marea Mannion, a veteran broadcaster and Teaching Professor at Penn State’s Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, said “the lines are even more blurred than a decade ago“ for media consumers.

Marea Mannion

“Some (consumers) don’t understand differences between what they’re getting from a cable network talk show or panel discussion and traditional journalism,” she said.

James Alan Fox, The Lipman Family Professor of Criminology at Northeastern University, said the confusion is exacerbated when the media covers gun violence such as the recent school shooting tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL.

“There are actually on average about 20 mass killings a year and 300 mass shootings, if you include victims who were injured,” said Fox. “(But) there is a tendency in the media to want to go with a bigger number.

“We have a similar situation with school shootings. Everytown for Gun Safety says there have been 270 since Sandy Hook, but half of them were suicides, (and) some were accidental discharges of a gun or a shooting in which no one was injured.”

He added: “The fact is that the bigger a number that is used in a story, the more likely it is to be discussed.”

Dan Shelley, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association, said that while journalists have done an “outstanding job under very difficult circumstances,” newsrooms need to put greater thought into how mass shootings are covered.

James Alan Fox

“You can’t wait until a mass shooting occurs and make those decisions on the fly,” he said. “You have to have a lot of internal debate and discussion within newsrooms of ‘how are we going to cover this, how are we going to balance the needs of the public to know what is going on with the safety of those involved in ongoing situations?’”

Turning to coverage of the controversial topic of police shootings of civilians, the panel praised media efforts to provide balanced reporting.

“The difference in the last few years has been the presence of (police) body cameras,” said Roger Goldman, Callis Family Professor of Law, emeritus, at Saint Louis University.

Roger Goldman

“The real problem is that the criminal justice system doesn’t have an effective way of dealing with police killings. Federal civil rights cases on police shootings are very difficult to win; you have to show intentional violation of civil rights. That’s why I’ve advocated the administrative approach of de-certification—revoking the officer’s certificate or license—so that he can no longer serve in law enforcement.”

But Shelley also called attention to what he called the “terrible trend” of authorities attempting to block media coverage of civil unrest by intimidation or arrest, noting there were 34 arrests of journalists last year—more than 70 percent of which occurred when journalists were covering demonstrations following police shootings.

Dan Shelley

“St. Louis was the most dangerous place in America last year to be a journalist covering civil unrest,” Shelley said, noting that police used a technique called “kettling” in which they surrounded groups of protesters, inadvertently catching journalists within the surrounded area.

“They then told people to disperse when they had no place to go, and journalists ended up being arrested and pepper-sprayed along with the protesters. In St. Louis, it took a federal injunction to stop the police department from attacking protesters and punishing journalists just for doing their jobs.

“This is a terrible trend and really has hampered the efforts of responsible journalists to cover civil unrest after police shootings.”

Turning to the opioid epidemic, the participants praised the coverage for its emphasis on the public health aspects of the crisis, while noting the contrast between how the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s was covered in national media.

Brandt Williams

“The majority of the national reporting I’ve read, watched and listened to (much of it very powerful) has focused on humanizing the addicts, first responders, (and) small communities impacted by the epidemic, and some proposed solutions,” said Brandt Williams, a board member of Criminal Justice Journalists and a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio.

“But I also hear criticism from people of color that the same type of coverage was lacking during the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s. And that law enforcement’s newfound empathy for drug users has come about because the national face of the opioid crisis is white and rural – even though people of color are being disproportionately impacted by the drug.”

The Trump administration’s attacks on journalists and news outlets have been a prominent feature over the past year, but panelists pointed out the attacks have not prevented the media from providing groundbreaking coverage and investigative reports on issues such as sexual harassment.

“The only antidote to attacks on journalism is more and better journalism,” said Shelley.

This report is the latest in a series of annual reviews of justice media coverage, sponsored by John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice with support from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Readers’ comments are welcome.

The Supreme Court has turned down the Trump administration’s plea to decide whether it is entitled to close a program protecting undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

The decision announced Monday leaves in place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA as it is most commonly known, which shields some 700,000 young, undocumented immigrants from deportation. The decision was expected, according to the New York Times.

In a response issued after the court decision, Department of Justice spokesman Devin O’Malley said, “We will continue to defend DHS’ lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner.”

The Trump administration had declared in September 2017 that it would seek to shut down the program by March 5. However, the Supreme Court’s decision to turn down the appeal ensures that this legal shield will be upheld at least until the end of this year.

In January, the Federal District Court in San Francisco had ruled that the administration’s attempt to end the program was an “abuse” of its discretionary powers. Subsequently, the Federal Court in Brooklyn came to the same conclusion.

This summary was prepared by TCR news intern Julia Pagnamenta.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/26/supreme-court-rejects-trump-plea-on-dreamers/feed/5Rising White Incarceration Reduced Racial Gap in Jails: Studyhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/26/rising-white-incarceration-reduced-racial-gap-in-jails-study/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/26/rising-white-incarceration-reduced-racial-gap-in-jails-study/#respondMon, 26 Feb 2018 14:47:10 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=249459A rise in jail incarceration rates for white Americans, particularly in rural counties and smaller metropolitan jurisdictions, has significantly narrowed the racial gap in the nation’s 3,000 jails, according to the latest in a series of studies by the Vera Institute of Justice.

While the study said that African-Americans are still “over-represented” in jails—they are 3.6 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites—it found that the jailed white population had doubled between 1990 and 2013.

The black jail incarceration rate declined by 20 per cent nationally between 2005 and 2013, shrinking the disparity between black and white jailed populations by nearly half in that period. But, effectively, the shift only brought the gap between blacks and whites back to where it was in 1990, the study said.

“In 2013, the black jail incarceration rate was relatively the same as it was almost 25 years ago — with 904 black people in jail per 100,000 black people in the community in 1990 compared to 915 per 100,000 in 2013,” said the study released today.

The authors called the continued disparities “alarming given recent efforts across the nation to downsize the overall footprint of local jail incarceration.”

The report, entitled “Divided Justice,” was written by Ram Subramanian, Kristine Riley, and Chris Mai, and released as part of a series commissioned by the “Safety and Justice Challenge, an initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce over-incarceration by “changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.”

The authors said the reasons for the shift in racial composition were unclear, but they pointed out that the rise in white jail numbers, particularly in small and rural areas, paralleled the spread of the opioid epidemic, which has ravaged white populations in those areas, and brought many into contact with the justice system.

By 2013, the South held around the same number of white people in jail on any given day as the other three regions combined.

According to the study, the number of whites in jail doubled from 163,000 to 330,000 between 1990 and 2013. The increases were seen largely in smaller cities and rural countries in all areas of the country, but the report added that “growth in the South was so great that by 2013, the South held around the same number of white people in jail on any given day as the other three regions combined.”

The authors also suggested that the growth in white incarceration could reflect large numbers of Hispanics jailed for violations of federal immigration laws, noting that many jails failed to keep accurate demographic records that distinguished Latinos from the overall white population.

Another hypothesis offered by the researchers for the change in racial composition of the jail population was the variation in criminal justice resources available in different jurisdictions. Conditions that might account for the differences included relative access to courts, the availability of pretrial counseling and public defender services, and treatment for substance abuse—all of which could result in “different racial outcomes depending on where people live.”

The authors said racial disparities in incarceration needed to be addressed directly by policymakers.

“Wrestling with the issue of race and incarceration remains uncomfortable ground because it forces people to confront a deep legacy of racism in this country, past and present,” the authors said. “This lack of direct inquiry has compounded the existing dearth of knowledge about why racial disparities continue to exist in local jail incarceration.”

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/26/rising-white-incarceration-reduced-racial-gap-in-jails-study/feed/0DOJ Announces New Policies on Forensic Sciencehttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/22/doj-announces-new-policies-on-forensic-science/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/22/doj-announces-new-policies-on-forensic-science/#commentsThu, 22 Feb 2018 15:30:29 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=247660Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced new Department of Justice policies to advance forensic science at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences 70th Annual Scientific Meeting in Seattle, the department says. The new guidance implements quality assurance measures based on science-informed practices, enhances forensic capacity and efficiency, and increases coordination and collaboration between the department and state, local, and federal partners.

“Forensic science, used appropriately, will help us accomplish our mission,” Rosenstein said. “The policies that I am announcing today will advance the Justice Department’s commitment to reliable science that helps us to find and report the truth.”

DOJ released uniform language for testimony and reports for use by its forensic examiners to provide testimonial consistency and quality assurance and department-wide testimony monitoring practices to ensure testimonial consistency and accountability by forensic examiners.

Rosenstein said that DOJ forensic laboratories that support criminal investigations and prosecutions will begin publicly posting current quality management system documents and summaries of internal validation studies online. DOJ also will “re-charter” its Council of Federal Forensic Laboratory Directors, which will begin meeting again this May. All executive branch agencies with forensic laboratories and digital analysis entities are invited to join.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/22/doj-announces-new-policies-on-forensic-science/feed/2Jail Populations Keep Falling, Down 11.2% in 8 Yearshttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/22/jail-populations-keep-falling-down-11-2-in-8-years/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/22/jail-populations-keep-falling-down-11-2-in-8-years/#respondThu, 22 Feb 2018 15:22:50 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=247601The percentage of U.S. residents in jail dropped 3.4 percent from midyear 2012 to midyear 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported on Thursday. The jail incarceration rate fell from 237 inmates per 100,000 residents at midyear 2012 to 229 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents at midyear 2016. The incarceration rate fell 11.2 percent from midyear 2008, when there were 258 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, to midyear 2016.

County and city jails held 740,700 inmates at midyear 2016. This was below the peak of 785,500 inmates in 2008, the year with the most jail inmates since 1982, when the agency began its annual jail survey. In 2016, jails reported 10.6 million admissions, continuing a steady decline since 2008, when there were 13.6 million. On average, those admitted to jail in 2016 stayed 25 days. At the end of 2016, 65 percent of those in jail were not convicted of an offense but were awaiting court action on a current charge. The remaining 35 percent were sentenced offenders or convicted offenders awaiting sentencing. Nearly 7 in 10 inmates were held in jail on felony charges, while 1 in 4 were held for misdemeanor offenses.

The rate at which people were held in local jails varied widely by racial and ethnic groups. At year-end 2016, non-Hispanic blacks (599 per 100,000 black U.S. residents) had the highest jail incarceration rate, followed by American Indian or Alaska Natives (359 per 100,000 American Indian or Alaska Natives residents). Hispanics (185 per 100,000 Hispanic residents) and non-Hispanic whites (171 per 100,000 white residents) were incarcerated in jails at a similar rate at year-end 2016. Blacks were incarcerated in jail at a rate 3.5 times that of whites at year-end 2016. This was down from 5.6 times the rate in 2000.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/22/jail-populations-keep-falling-down-11-2-in-8-years/feed/0Cops Weigh Chance of Conviction Before Arresting Rape Suspects: Studyhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/21/cops-weigh-chance-of-conviction-before-arresting-rape-suspects-study/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/21/cops-weigh-chance-of-conviction-before-arresting-rape-suspects-study/#respondWed, 21 Feb 2018 14:40:19 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=247081Police officers’ perceptions about the chances of a rape suspect being convicted can determine whether they actually make an arrest, concluded a California study which found that less than half the rape cases reported to law enforcement ended in an arrest.

The study, published in the Justice Quarterly this month, attributed the low number of arrests to police officers’ belief that a conviction was unlikely.

“Police officers view the decision to arrest as the first step in the process of securing a conviction in the case,” the study said. “And as a result (police) are reluctant to make arrests that are unlikely to lead to the filing of charges.”

The researchers, Cassia Spohn, a foundation professor and director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University; and Katharine Tellis, Interim Director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminalistics at California State University, Los Angeles, analyzed data on sexual assaults reported to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 2008.

They found that only 46.8 percent of rape cases reported ended in an arrest.

According to the authors, arresting and charging decisions in sexual assault cases are affected by “legally irrelevant indicators” such as the victim’s behavior at the time of the incident, her character, reputation, and motivation for reporting the crime to the police.

But under the Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook, law enforcement agencies can legally drop cases after an arrest. If the district attorney deems the evidence in the case insufficient to justify charging, police officers are able to end the investigation by “exceptional means,” the study said.

“This is what more typically happens,” added the study.

The authors argued that law enforcement in Los Angeles misused the “exceptional means” clearance of sexual assault cases in two important situations: when an arrest does not lead to the filing of felony charges, and when cases are rejected for prosecution during the pre-arrest charge evaluation.

“Whether a subject is arrested should not be contingent on whether the prosecuting attorney believes that the evidence meets the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and that the case would result in jury conviction,” the study said.

Doing so subjects the decision to arrest to a higher standard of proof than is required by law and effectively gives the prosecutor control over the decision to arrest, the authors noted.

When sexual assault charges did reach the district attorney, they were only filed six percent of the time if there was not a prior arrest, the study found.

But when there was a prior arrest, cases were filed 50 percent of the time.

Detectives acknowledged during interviews that their decisions on making an arrest were influenced by signals from the District Attorney’s office of whether a successful prosecution could be brought.

The study said this suggested that pre-arrest charge evaluation is being used not to ensure that “all of the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed, but to dispose of weak or problematic cases.”

The study also found that arrest was more likely if the crime was more serious, as measured by whether the suspect physically, as well as sexually, assaulted the victim, whether the suspect used a weapon, and whether the victim suffered some type of collateral injury.

Police were more likely to arrest the suspect if the victim reported the crime within one hour, if there was physical evidence from a crime scene, and if there were a number of witnesses, the report said.

A full copy of the study can be downloaded here.

This summary was prepared by TCR staffer Megan Hadley. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/21/cops-weigh-chance-of-conviction-before-arresting-rape-suspects-study/feed/0Prosecutors and Wrongful Convictions: ‘Pay Now or Pay Later’https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/20/prosecutors-and-wrongful-convictions-pay-now-or-pay-later/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/20/prosecutors-and-wrongful-convictions-pay-now-or-pay-later/#commentsTue, 20 Feb 2018 14:19:08 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=246184Three big-city prosecutors who have formed special units to review—and correct—errors made by their offices say a “cultural shift” is necessary to persuade politicians, police and their own attorneys that it is more important to avoid mistakes than to simply win convictions.

“My pitch to (county) commissioners is ‘pay now or pay later,’” says Kim Ogg, the District Attorney for Texas’ Harris County, noting that settlements for civil rights suits or wrongful convictions often end up costing more than the money spent on units dedicated to reviewing faulty cases after they’ve already happened.

“It requires changes in every aspect of our policies and practices that support the search for the truth.”

According to Brooklyn (NY) District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, the Conviction Review Unit formed by his predecessor Ken Thompson has sent signals to both young assistant district attorneys and veteran lawyers in his office that their job performances will no longer just be tied to the number of convictions they win.

“It’s a cultural shift,” says Gonzalez. “They get as much credit for pointing out errors and mistakes as for securing trial convictions.”

In Baltimore, where investigators are now looking into thousands of cases—some of them years old—which may have involved wrongful or illegal behavior by police, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby tells her prosecutors that the “only way to better the system is to learn from errors.”

All three elected prosecutors, speaking at the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America at John Jay College last week, said it was often an uphill battle to get the resources to fund an approach that is far from popular among justice and law enforcement professionals.

And they made clear that one of the primary values of such conviction reviews was to prevent mistakes from being repeated in future cases.

“When I was a young prosecutor, I was taught that there are no wrongful executions or exonerations in Texas, and that no one in prison was innocent,” said Ogg, who was elected DA last year in Harris County, which includes Houston.

But, she added, prosecutors across America should now be governed by a mindset that “we’re responsible for cases forever, and to ensure the integrity of convictions forever.”

She added that the “worst fear” of any prosecutor should be that someone is wrongfully convicted in their jurisdiction.

“We are the guardians of constitutional protection,” she said. “Without public trust, people won’t participate (and they) will take justice in their own hands.”

Ogg, whose office recently vacated thousands of convictions that were discovered to be the result of faulty evidence or the misuse of lab tests, said she was in the midst of persuading the 94 separate law enforcement jurisdictions in her county to adapt better evidence collection and storage methods—“one police chief at a time.”

“I haven’t had to invoke the nuclear option, which is to say you can present me a case, but I won’t necessarily try it,” she said, noting that her targets included police unions, which resist having their members singled out for justice system errors.

In Brooklyn, where the alleged misconduct of a detective put into doubt hundreds of cases, the Conviction Review Unit now occupies an entire floor of attorneys who do nothing but review old cases, with an annual budget of more than a million dollars.

“Not only do we have to get (wrongfully convicted) people out of prison, we have to learn the lessons about what can go wrong in the justice system,” Gonzalez said.

“I tell (our City Council) at budget hearings that every time someone is wrongfully convicted, it’s a very expensive mistake,” said Gonzalez. “So give us the money to make sure we get it right the first time.”

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby

He added: “Public safety is paramount, but we also have the obligation to do justice.”

Mosby said her office of 212 prosecutors was already working on 50,000 cases a year, so it was a “political” challenge to persuade state and local authorities to dedicate separate resources to conviction reviews.

“You have to think outside the box,” said Mosby, who recently secured a $219,000 grant from the Innocence Project in partnership with the city’s defense attorney bar to help pay for the city’s conviction integrity unit.

Mosby said it was equally important to develop resources to help exonerated individuals navigate their path back to civilian society.

She cited one case in which a person died three months after being released from prison after 17 years for a murder he didn’t commit.

“There’s nothing in place (now) to help those who were wrongfully convicted,” she said.

Ogg said she had also won support from victims’ groups.

“I never met a victim yet who wanted the wrong person prosecuted,” she said.

TCR Deputy Editor Victoria Mckenzie contributed to this report. The complete panel can be viewed here. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/20/prosecutors-and-wrongful-convictions-pay-now-or-pay-later/feed/4America ‘Can’t Arrest Its Way Out of the Opioid Epidemic’https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/16/america-cant-arrest-its-way-out-of-the-opioid-epidemic/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/16/america-cant-arrest-its-way-out-of-the-opioid-epidemic/#respondFri, 16 Feb 2018 13:30:20 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=245054America “can’t arrest its way out of the opioid epidemic,” a top official of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) said Thursday.

Paul Cell, First Vice President of the IACP, called for an increase in collaborative efforts among law enforcement, health care workers and social-service providers to address an epidemic that is costing more American lives each year than automobile crashes.

“We have to put our egos in check,” Cell said at a conference on “Justice in the Heartland” at John Jay College in New York.

“Our children are dying. The time for silos is past.”

Chief Paul Cell

Cell, who serves as chief of the Montclair (NJ) State University Police and will become president of the 30,000-member IACP next year, was speaking at the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, which brings together journalists, academics and justice practitioners for discussions on criminal justice issues.

He was joined by Rita Noonan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Cheri Walter, CEO of the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Authorities; and José Diaz-Briseño, Washington correspondent for La Reforma of Mexico.

All the panelists agreed that efforts aimed only at punishing addicts or their suppliers failed to address the roots of the opioid epidemic, and did little to help people trying to overcome their addictions.

“If you don’t treat the addiction, they’ll find a new drug.”

For example, Walter cited the crackdown on “pill mills” in Ohio a few years ago that was intended to stop the traffic in synthetic pain relievers which had flooded the state, but was not linked to efforts to medically treat substance-abusers.

“If you don’t treat the addiction, they’ll find a new drug,” she said.

“We all need creativity, collaboration and curiosity,” said Noonan, who is chief of the Health Systems and Trauma Systems Branch of the CDC’s division of Unintentional Injury Prevention. “We have to do things we haven’t done before.”

But at a second panel on the epidemic, speakers said it was also important not to lose sight of the responsibility incurred by large pharmaceutical companies for the explosion of opioid addiction over the past decade.

A closer look at reasons for the rise in opioid dependency in tribal communities led directly to the practices pursued by the pharmaceutical firms in marketing the painkilling drugs, said John Chapman Young, senior assistant attorney general of the Cherokee Nation, which is mounting a lawsuit against major drugmakers and distributors.

“We want them to obey federal laws with respect to how many drugs they shift into our jurisdiction,” he said. “They owe us a lot of money.”

The Cherokee Nation lawsuit is one of several mounted around the country, including a major action mounted by a coalition of attorneys-general in 13 states.

Joseph Rannazzisi, a former senior official at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), said Congress bore some of the blame for failing to address pharmaceutical companies’ marketing behavior.

“You have to ask yourself a question,” he said. “At the height of an epidemic driven by the pharmaceutical industry, why would Congress pass a bill to protect the pharmaceutical industry?” he said, referring to a law passed in 2016 that limited DEA efforts to crackdown on doctors and pharmacists involved in the black market for pills.

“The pharmaceutical lobby is the strongest lobby in congress. They won’t change until we force them to comply.”

Speakers in both panels also noted that the epidemic had morphed into a surge in heroin trafficking into the U.S., as many addicts unable to afford the cost of prescription medicines, turned to heroin as a cheaper alternative.

Some 80 percent of the global market for heroin is now located in the U.S.

Some 80 percent of the global market for heroin is now located in the U.S., aggravated by the increased traffic in fentanyl, a synthetic opioid even more potent than heroin and which is often lethal, Cell said.

Most of the fentanyl appears to come from China, but “there are labs around the world and we see it now being sold through the Dark Web,” said Chief Cell.

Craig Hannah, presiding judge of the Opiate Treatment Court in Buffalo, NY, said it was hard to read descriptions of the opioid epidemic as a public health emergency, when a similar epidemic of crack cocaine during the 1980s was treated as a law enforcement problem.

”Why didn’t we treat this epidemic when our black and brown people were (suffering from) it in the 1980s?” he asked. “Those years in the past were a tragedy—generations of young people were put in jails.”

But he added that, nevertheless, the current consensus that “you cannot lock up an addiction” suggested the country was ready for innovative approaches outside the justice system.

Buffalo’s treatment court diverts substance-abusers to treatment before any criminal charges are laid.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/16/america-cant-arrest-its-way-out-of-the-opioid-epidemic/feed/0Key Conservative Tells Congress: Pass Sentencing Reformhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/16/key-conservative-tells-congress-pass-the-sentencing-reform-act/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/16/key-conservative-tells-congress-pass-the-sentencing-reform-act/#respondFri, 16 Feb 2018 13:00:22 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=245088One of the nation’s leading conservatives called on federal lawmakers Thursday to pass the newest version of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, and he urged President Donald Trump to sign it.

Mark Holden. Photo by John Ramsey/TCR

Mark Holden, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Koch Industries, said the proposed measure, which would reduce mandatory-minimum sentences for some nonviolent federal drug offenders and support incentives for prisoners to earn early release, was a “good bill.”

“Congress needs to do its job in changing (the Act) and get the president to sign it,” he told journalists and criminal justice professionals at John Jay College in New York.

Holden conceded that the bill probably “wasn’t going anywhere” because of the administration’s opposition, but at the same time he said the White House was “fully on board” with efforts to improve the chances of individuals leaving prison to reintegrate with the community and become responsible citizens.

He argued that prison reform remained an important political prerogative for the White House—and for President Trump personally.

“Keep in mind that this is a president who ran on the notion that he would provide a voice for the voiceless and the forgotten men and women in our society,” Holden said. “If that’s the case, this is the place to be, because that’s who’s in our prisons these days—the voiceless, the forgotten people.”

Holden provided no further details about White House plans, but he said the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was a strong supporter of reforms, noting among other reasons his own family’s involvement with the justice system. Kushner’s father Charles, a real-estate developer, was convicted in 2005 of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering, and served time in federal prison.

Few people truly understood prison’s impact on individuals unless they had “proximity” with someone who had been behind bars, and Jared Kushner “had proximity,” Holden said.

Holden, who also serves as chairman of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, is one of the leading conservative voices pushing for an overhaul of the justice system. Although Koch Industries, headed by multi-billionaire Charles Koch, has been a bitter target of liberals and reformers for its financing of libertarian causes, it has also been a major backer of the bipartisan “smart on crime” movement.

He noted that his group had been “very open and honest” in its disagreements with some of the new administration’s justice policies, such as Sessions’ reversal of his predecessor’s softening of some drug sentencing laws, the failure to move ahead on the federal sentencing overhaul bill, and its opposition to marijuana legalization.

“We disagree that they should be doing what they’re doing with marijuana,” he said. “But in Sessions’ defense, it is on the books, it’s a felony to smoke marijuana. So we need to change that law and Congress needs to get off their butts and do something, and the President needs to sign that.”

Holden used his remarks to promote the Safe Streets and Second Chances program, a Koch-backed initiative aimed at eventually ensuring that all individuals entering prison in the U.S. immediately receive a program of counseling, education and rehabilitative care geared towards preparing them for productive lives after release.

He said it was a moral, constitutional and fiscal imperative for all Americans, regardless of their ideological affiliations, to end the “two-tiered system (where) the rich and guilty are treated better than the poor and innocent, and people plead guilty to things they didn’t do because of the power of prosecutors and a lack of full time lawyers to defend them.”

“We don’t let anyone get back on their feet in a real way,” Holden added. “People with criminal records continue to pay the debt for the rest of their lives due the pernicious collateral consequences of a criminal record that exist in this country.”

The Safe Streets, Second Chances initiative, in collaboration with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Florida State University, and others, is already operating pilot projects in prisons in several states and hoped to develop data that would persuade more states to buy into the program, Holden said.

TCR News Intern John Ramsey contributed to this report. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/16/key-conservative-tells-congress-pass-the-sentencing-reform-act/feed/0John Jay ‘Justice in the Heartland’ Conference Available on Livestreamhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/15/john-jay-justice-in-the-heartland-conference-available-today-on-livestream/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/15/john-jay-justice-in-the-heartland-conference-available-today-on-livestream/#respondThu, 15 Feb 2018 16:37:09 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=244690The 13th annual John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, which opened Thursday with a close look at the nation’s opioid crisis, is accessible via livestream at John Jay College’s YouTube channel.

Chief Paul Cell

Featured speakers at the opening panels include Paul Cell, First Vice President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police; Rita Noonan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Joe Rannazzisi, former deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Diversion Control at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The two-day conference, entitled “Justice in the Heartland,” brings together journalists, criminal justice policymakers, practitioners and academics for discussions on the state of sentencing and corrections reform, the homicide “spike” in several major US cities, and the rise of the underground gun market and other emerging justice issues.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/15/john-jay-justice-in-the-heartland-conference-available-today-on-livestream/feed/0News Staff Decline Threatens US Justice Coverage: Studyhttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/14/decline-in-news-staffing-threatens-us-justice-coverage-study/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/14/decline-in-news-staffing-threatens-us-justice-coverage-study/#respondWed, 14 Feb 2018 15:42:44 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=244352The continued decline in staffing in news outlets throughout the nation has reduced the media resources available to cover crime and justice, according to the latest annual review of crime journalism in the US.

“Over the last 15 years, the workforce of U.S. newspapers shrunk from 412,000 employees to 174,000 (and) the number of reporters covering statehouses—where much criminal justice policy is made—has declined even further,” said the report by Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ), citing figures quoted by Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan.

The annual CJJ review released Wednesday notes that immigration issues, the opioid crisis, sexual abuse scandals, and the continued spate of mass shootings received the most intense attention from the media during 2017.

But public interest in these topics has not helped the print media overcome the decline in readership spurred by competition from online sources.

“Newspapers are not the only source of local reporting, of course,” the review said. “Television and radio stations, and community newspapers, continue to thrive in many areas; (and) websites have filled some of the gap left by the erosion of daily newspapers.”

In one of the starkest examples of the trend, the CJJ Review pointed to the Charleston, W. Va., Gazette-Mail, which earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for its reporting on the prescription drug epidemic. Last month, the family-owned, 37,000-circulation paper filed for bankruptcy. (The Gazette-Mail said it was seeking bids from new owners.)

“Crime and justice always have been staples of local reporting, and that hasn’t changed,” the CJJ said. But it warned, “There is bound to be less of that reporting as the number of people doing it on a regular basis is much diminished in many U.S. cities.”

The annual review by CJJ, the only national organization of crime and justice reporters, is sponsored by the John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice (publisher of The Crime Report) and supported with a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

Rubén Rosario

The review was prepared by Ted Gest, president of CJJ and the Washington bureau chief of The Crime Report; and Rubén Rosario, Metro columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a CJJ board member.

The review noted key findings from an analysis by Andrew Tyndall of news coverage by the nightly news programs of the three major networks:

The most-covered crime stories were mass shootings: the killing of 58 concertgoers in Las Vegas by Stephen Paddock, followed by the attack on members of Congress at a baseball practice in northern Virginia, and the massacre at a Texas church in which 26 people were killed.

Seven of the top 20 stories on all subjects had some criminal justice element, leading with the investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections and including President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey, the White House ban on travel from Muslim-majority nations, and the immigration crackdown generally.

One subject that received less national media coverage last year than it had in previous years was crime in Chicago, where homicides in recent years had hit the highest levels in two decades. That is because the total dropped in 2017. This Chicago Tribunesummary said that the year’s murder count was down 15 percent, or more than 100.

Ted Gest

Even later than the FBI report was the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ annual victimization survey, which on Dec. 7 estimated 5.7 million “violent victimizations” in the nation in 2016 but said that because of a redesign of the survey, there could not be a precise comparison between 2015 and 2016.

Newsweek magazine reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had misrepresented his own agency’s statistics by saying in a speech, alluding to that report, that there had been a 13 percent spike in the violent crime rate.

“The report he was citing clearly said there had been no measurable change,” Newsweek said.

The fallout from pledges by President Trump and Attorney General Sessions to take a tougher line than the Obama administration on crime and punishment, which shifted Department of Justice policies and raised concerns among reformers and advocates, received noteworthy attention from major national media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times.

“Return of the war on drugs” was the front page headline in the Washington Post on Sunday, April 9. The story featured Sessions’ hiring of federal prosecutor Steven Cook of Knoxville, Tn., an advocate of tougher federal sentencing. The Post reported that Sessions and Cook “are eager to bring back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ‘90s from the peak of the drug war.”

The following day, in “The Rise and Fall of Federal Efforts to Curb Police Abuse,” the New York Times described another Obama-era policy likely to fall under Trump, the use of consent decrees to impose reforms on policing in cities across the nation. Then in June, the administration replaced the National Commission on Forensic Science with an in-house task force. The Washington Postreported on this, as well as on the suspension of an effort to set uniform standards for forensic testimony and to widen a review of FBI testimony on several controversial techniques.

Another notable example of Trump policy coverage was published by the New York Times on Nov. 22 under the headline, “Dept. of Justice Eases Scrutiny of Local Police.” The newspaper said that many police chiefs lamented the demise of the Justice Department’s “collaborative reform” program in which police departments got Justice Department advice on best practices. The article attributed the conversion of the program to “technical assistance” in large part to the Fraternal Order of Police, which believes that the previous effort was too burdensome on rank-and-file officers.

Immigration Coverage: “A New Standard of Negativity”?

Turning to immigration, the CJJ review observed that the Trump administration’s vow to crack down on undocumented residents made the issue 16th on the top 20 story subjects covered during the year in the annual analysis compiled by analyst Andrew Tyndall of stories covered by the three major broadcast networks in their nightly news programs.

Moreover, a study by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy of media coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office found that immigration was the single most covered subject during the period, commanding 17 percent of coverage by the major media (health care was second, with 12 percent).

The study assessed the tone of coverage, finding that overall coverage of Trump “set a new standard for negativity,” with 80 percent of it judged to be negative. Notably, immigration received far the most negative coverage of any topic, by the Shorenstein Center’s assessment, with a full 96 percent of stories judged as negative.

One reason that so much of the coverage is deemed negative may be that news stories often point out misstatements by President Trump and his associates.

For example, on Aug. 10, Slate.com reported on Trump’s repeated references to the 2015 killing of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by a man who had been deported from the US five times and who then re-entered the country illegally. (The man was recently acquitted.) Early in his presidential campaign, Trump said, “Public reports routinely state great amounts of crime are being committed by illegal immigrants.”

Slate countered: “This is not true. Study after study shows undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the general population, and crime rates in cities with large immigrant populations have fallen disproportionately. Regardless, the lie that undocumented immigrants are likely to be violent criminals would help propel Trump to the GOP nomination and ultimately the presidency.”

Much of the local coverage has dealt with aspects of the “sanctuary city” question, with many stories about the administration’s threats to withhold federal aid from jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with federal authorities on detaining undocumented immigrants. Many big city mayors and police chiefs have not complied, arguing that many citizens, both legal residents and others, will not cooperate with law enforcement on any issue if they could be threatened with deportation.

Police shootings and misconduct were another set of issues that drew national attention again last year. The CJJ Review singled out the Washington Post as one of the few national media outlets that have closely following the problem of police misconduct since the 2014 Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO.

On Sunday, Aug. 6, the newspaper published results of a major investigation headlined “Fired/Rehired,” concluding that since 2006 at least 1,881 officers had been fired by 37 large police departments. Some 451 of them appealed and won their jobs back through rulings of arbitrators.

Opioids: Deaths (and Media Coverage) Increase

Media attention to the opioid crisis has tracked the rising overdose death totals especially in the Rust Belt states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. CJJ singled out CBS’ “60 Minutes” and the WashingtonPost for an investigation broadcast and published on Oct.15, which reported that Congress in the spring of 2016 stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from its strongest weapon against drug companies that are suspected of providing large quantities of prescription narcotics to the public. The law made it virtually impossible for DEA to freeze suspicious drug shipments from the companies.

The reporting had at least one significant result: It highlighted the fact that the legislation had been spearheaded by Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA), who had been nominated by President Trump as the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (popularly known as the “drug czar.”) After all the publicity, Marino withdrew his candidacy.

Another notable example of coverage came from The Cincinnati Enquirer, located in the heart of the area most affected by the opioid epidemic, which published a special report on Sept. 10 headlined “Seven Days of Heroin: This Is What An Epidemic Looks Like.”

As described by Nieman Storyboard, during one week in July, the newspaper sent more than 60 reporters, photographers and videographers to document the impact of heroin in the Cincinnati area. They went to jails, courts, methadone clinics and psychiatric hospitals. The reporting included witnessing overdoses, listening to 911 calls, attending recovery meetings and riding with police officers who were looking for users and dealers. They tallied 18 deaths and 180 overdoses during the week.

Nieman Storyboard called the paper’s effort “a riveting portrait of the human face of heroin. Instead of a traditional narrative, the project was presented largely as a series of chronological vignettes, interspersed with photos, social media posts, 911 recordings and rap lyrics. The mixed-media collage effectively showed that virtually no local geography or institution was left untouched by heroin.”

These and other stories are indications that the media have covered the opioid crisis both as a public health emergency and as a criminal justice challenge. This contrasts with the treatment of the crack cocaine surge of the 1980s, which was mostly reported on as a law enforcement issue.

Sexual Harassment’s Media Moment

Sexual abuse in the U.S. may not have increased, but news media coverage of it intensified, the CJJ said, noting that “it seemed that hardly a week went by in late 2017 before another celebrity was accused of harassment, some of it dating from decades earlier.”

The issue exploded onto the front pages in early October, when the New York Times published an extensive report that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had quietly settled at least eight sexual harassment complaints over three decades. It was not clear in early 2018 that any of the numerous accusations against Weinstein would lead to a criminal case, but the Weinstein story set the backdrop for a number of other prominent charges against entertainment and media figures as well as politicians, such as U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who was pressured to resign after he was accused of abuse in several cases.

The news media themselves were hit by a barrage of major departures over sexual harassment charges, including Matt Lauer of NBC, Charlie Rose of CBS, Michael Oreskes of NPR, and Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker.

“The news media is supposed to be a surrogate for the public, and most Americans don’t like the thought that our surrogates are living in and endorsing workplace environments in which sexual harassment now seems to be too common,” Jeffrey McCall, a professor of media studies at DePauw University, told The Hill.

“Further complicating the media’s image in all of this is the sanctimonious manner in which the media has covered sexual harassment in other corners of society,” McCall said. “It is difficult for the news media to parade around as haughty overseers of right and wrong in broader contexts of society when they clearly have in-house confusion about first principles of decency.”

Kelly McBride of the Florida-based Poynter Institute, a longtime writer on media ethics, says that many media policies on reporting sexual harassment are behind the times, limited to rules such as “Because of the stigma associated with sexual assault, we do not publish the names of victims.”

Rather than starting with a policy that tells us what to avoid, what if our policies encouraged us to tell the story of sexual assault more completely, so that the public might understand how it happens and how to prevent it? Today’s policies presume that our journalistic motive for telling a sexual assault story is rooted in our urge to improve public safety. But sexual assault isn’t really a public safety problem; it’s a public health problem.

This is a condensed version of the CJJ report. The full copy can be downloaded here. Readers’ comments are welcome.

]]>https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/14/decline-in-news-staffing-threatens-us-justice-coverage-study/feed/0Domestic Violence Called ‘Latest Battleground’ in Tribal Justicehttps://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/09/domestic-violence-is-latest-battleground-in-tribal-justice/
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/02/09/domestic-violence-is-latest-battleground-in-tribal-justice/#respondFri, 09 Feb 2018 16:00:32 +0000https://thecrimereport.org/?p=243102Tribal courts are the “latest battleground” for reforming the way domestic violence cases are handled in Indian Country, a new study says.

The study, published in the Winter 2018 issue of Criminal Justice, examines the jurisdictional issues relating to criminal law and Native Americans in the aftermath of the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), specifically in the handling of domestic violence cases involving non-Native Americans in tribal courts.

The 2013 amended version of VAWA gives tribal courts enhanced jurisdiction over criminal cases brought by tribes against nonmembers, including non-Native Americans. Yet Congress’s recognition of tribal criminal jurisdiction is accompanied by limitations and sets obligations on tribes.

Tribes that want to make use of VAWA’s jurisdictional provisions may be required to amend tribal law, and hire new judges and public defenders.

The article summarizes the limitations of the enhanced jurisdiction under VAWA according to types of offenses, types of defendants, types of victims, and procedural safeguards. For instance, non-native defendants in VAWA cases can only be prosecuted in tribal cases if they have one of the three following connections to the tribe’s reservation or lands:

They reside in Indian Country;

They’re employed in Indian country; or

They are “the spouse, intimate partner, or dating partner of an Indian living in Indian country or a tribal member.”

In February 2013, the Justice Department announced a pilot program giving three tribes jurisdiction over non-Native Americans in domestic violence cases that occur on their reservations.

Since 2015, another ten tribes were granted the same special domestic violence jurisdiction over non-Native Americans in tribal territory. Beginning in February, 2014 the original three jurisdictions began to put into practice their new strengthened jurisdiction.

Most likely, all of the courts approved in the pilot program will commence prosecuting cases shortly, if they haven’t already.

“It is extremely likely that many more tribes will soon adopt the enhanced VAWA domestic violence jurisdiction,” the paper said.

“Attorneys wishing to appear in tribal courts must be admitted to practice in those courts, which have their own rules for admission.”

Some tribes have their own bar exams, including two tribes currently applying the special domestic violence jurisdiction. Attorneys who appear in tribal courts shouldn’t anticipate the applicable rules of evidence or civil procedure of state or federal courts to be applicable in tribal court. Tribal courts have their own rules, procedures, and practices.

The paper concludes with the author admonishing attorneys to thoroughly prepare in advance before entering tribal courts in any domestic violence case.

Sexual violence continues to be an epidemic in tribal territory and until it subsides Indian nations will act vigilantly to protect their people and work toward a solution, the study said.

“Attorneys, as always, will be on the frontlines,” it added.

The paper was written by James D. Diamond, director of the Tribal Justice Clinic and professor of practice at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.